


Advice Isn’t Free

by anaturalintrovert



Series: Ni No Kuni Fics [2]
Category: Ni No Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch (Video Game)
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Crime Time, Gen, Light Angst, Tags Are Hard, also swaine was a douche as a kid and also gascon is edgy, marcassin gets talked about a lil bit, swaine calls out his past self, swaine is a dirty crime boy, the other characters are only really seen briefly
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-02
Updated: 2020-09-02
Packaged: 2021-03-06 19:47:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,576
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26254393
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anaturalintrovert/pseuds/anaturalintrovert
Summary: Swaine and Gascon have a heart to heart. Well, as much of a heart to heart as these disasters can get.
Relationships: Jairo | Swaine & Lars | Marcassin
Series: Ni No Kuni Fics [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1899427
Comments: 4
Kudos: 19





	Advice Isn’t Free

**Author's Note:**

> In which Swaine regrets being mean to his brother before leaving Hamelin and wants to right his wrongs. Hope you enjoy this :)

Everyone was exhausted.

To go back in time, traverse a mountain, defend yourselves from ghosts, fend off hexes, and fake your own death was blatantly exhausting. So, naturally, most of the party had gone to sleep. Even Drippy, the loudest, most full of energy member of the party had hit the hay. Swaine didn't feel like sleeping. The exhaustion had hit him the hardest, but it wasn't the sort that could be fixed with sleep. It was emotional. It burdened him and he couldn't just sleep it off.

That was unfair. Life was unfair. He learned that a while ago.

The house they'd stumbled across didn't give him the creeps. It actually was quite tasteful when you looked past the mould and moss. It had character. It'd been through storms. Swaine liked that. But he had no desire to rest. The party had healed already but he still felt hurt.

He sat outside and looked at the world, up on a mountain. He was probably one of the only people to be this high up. He could see a lot of Autumnia. But it hurt. If scenery could kill he'd be dead. Maybe the Poison Apple spell Oliver had cast on him had yet to wear off. That was what he told himself but it wasn't true.

He missed Autumnia. He missed Hamelin. No, that was giving the world too much credit. He missed luxury, Hell, he missed simply being able to live normally. He wanted to be free. When he was heartbroken he had felt free, which was probably why he didn't try to fight Shadar's power. He felt too free. It was all extremes with him, no happy middle ground.

That was all the world was to him - extreme.

He should live in the mountains. Wouldn't that be lovely.

He ate a bread roll, even though he was fully healthy. He was bored and just wanted something to do. Someone to speak with. He wanted to try and have a talk with Gascon, but it didn't seem worth it. Besides, last time Swaine had just told him to knock it off, it being his attitude towards his brother. Maybe just before they returned to their own time, if he could somehow separate the prince from Marcissan, he would try to make amends. No, the young boy followed Gascon everywhere, and Swaine remembered from experience that he couldn't get away from his brother for even a minute.

Unless Marcissan was asleep, which he was. That was when Gascon worked on his guns.

And funnily enough, Swaine heard the sounds of cogs turning and metal clinking. It was quiet over the wind, but present.

Gascon was sat with his legs dangling off the cliff edge, toying with his gun. He hardly noticed Swaine approach him. He sat next to him. God, some social skills that went beyond bullying and banter would be welcome here. "Why are you holding the gun like that? You'll shoot your eye out." Of course Gascon wouldn't shoot his eye out, since Swaine had his two eyes still perfectly in tact (if you didn't count the bags under them). It was a good scare tactic to get Gascon into good habits, though.

"What's my gun got to do with you, low-life?" Gascon sneered. Had he ever been this rude before? Well, yes, obviously, Swaine knew his own temperament to be very confrontational, but he swore that at some point he'd stopped. A few years after he'd had a conversation with a man that looked like...

Oh wait.

"Okay mate, I'm going to give it to you straight." Pause for effect. "You're a brat and no-one like you."

Gascon looked both confused and judgemental. "You what?"

The man Swaine had met was himself. He hadn't given himself the time since setting off on the Tombstone Trail to let the dots connect in his head but they finally had. What he'd always assumed to have been a horrible man with no verbal filter had in fact been a horrible man with no verbal filter but who still had good intentions. "I can't get into the details but we have a link. A connection of sorts."

"Oh, shut it until you're sane again."

"I'm more sane than you. What are you thinking, running off and leaving your brother?"

Gascon stopped messing with his gun. He clicked the parts back together and spun the barrel. It was meant to look threatening but Swaine only saw a young boy awkwardly fiddling with something out of guilt. "What are you on about, freak?"

"You know exactly what I'm on about. I know that you're leaving regardless," because changing the past will surely bugger something up in the future, Swaine added to himself silently, "but at least try to be decent about it."

"Decent?" Gascon laughed in his face. "What do you know about decency, low-life?" He spoke with more venom this time. "I doubt you can do anything decent yourself. I doubt you can even shoot decent! You just carry that pea shooter around to look tough." He gestured to Swaine's gun, which the man had taken out to silently show that he had a weapon too, and that Gascon wasn't special.

Swaine could take many things, but he couldn't take a taunt. As Gascon began to stand up, he stood up too. "Is that what you think?"

"Watch and learn." Gascon stood on the very edge of the cliff and held the gun in his left hand - his non dominant hand - just to show off. He closed one eye and gestured to a rock pillar in the distance with his weapon. "See those rocks?"

Gascon's finger was barely on the trigger when his target got toppled. He looked angrily to Swaine who blew the smoke from his gun. "You were saying?"

Gascon and Swaine were one and the same, so their stubbornness was entirely identical. If Swaine couldn't take a taunt, neither could Gascon. In fact, Gascon was a thousand times worse than his older self purely because of his age and an upbringing that made him bratty (an attribute he grew out of after the world beat him down a few times upon running away). So, Gascon saw the remnants of the rock tower and fired. There was no aim, the shot was one-handed using his non dominant hand, and one of his eyes were shut tightly. Not the mention the kickback from his homemade weapon had caught him completely off guard and he stumbled. His footing was nearly lost right on the edge of the cliff but he pulled himself back.

"Are you willing to listen to me now or are you going to keep whining like a piglet?"

Gascon tried to square up to the adult but he wasn't very intimidating. Neither of them were, really, since the two of them both looked like toothpicks, but Swaine at least had height. Swaine looked down at him. "You're making a fool of yourself, and it'll be worse if you leave the way you're planning."

"You don't know what I'm planning. You don't know where I plan to go."

"Stop lowering your voice like that, it makes you sound like you have a sore throat."

As if to punctuate Swaine's statement, Gascon broke off in a coughing fit, breaking his stare and and doubling over to cough, covering his mouth with his sleeve. He was just a kid. A stupid, bratty, edgy kid, but a kid nonetheless. He had grown out of most of those traits, and he generally tried not to regret his life, despite how much he failed. It was extremely difficult to not regret the way your life went when one of the hardest parts of it was thrown back in your face, though. The fact of the matter was that Swaine couldn't change the past, so he had to get that idea out of his head. What he could do was make the past easier. Not change the events, but change how they panned out. He remembered yelling at Marcassin. Blaming him. Calling him an awful kid. It was a fit of anger. Bitterness. Something had broken inside of him. The words had just fallen out. Ice had thawed into boiling water and it must have scorched Marcassin’s memory. After all the good times they’d shared, he’d managed to snap because he simply couldn’t stop himself.

Yeah, even before being heartbroken he was a terrible person. All of this right before leaving for fifteen years. He just wanted to take that one horrible event back. Was that too much to ask for?

Apparently so. "I'm leaving. Tomorrow. The second we finish with this trail thing or whatever, I am gone."

"I'm not going to stop you. It's your life." Our life. "I've been on the run for, what fifteen years?" His attempts to sound casual fell flat. He really wanted to dodge the topic of time as much as possible but he needed Gascon to understand that he wasn't just a madman with a scraggly beard and sunken eyes. He understood Gascon and what he would go through when running away, probably better than anyone ever would. "I know what I'm on about. Play the game safe and try to be good where you can. You probably won't be an angel all of the time, but give it your best shot."

"You can't tell me what to do."

"Just don't upset your brother."

"You sound like my dad."

"Your throat still sounds hoarse."

Gascon shrugged off what Swaine said as another jab at him and saw him walk away. Good. He didn't even need his advice. He would yell at Marcassin just to spite the man. Call his brother out for being lazy. He didn't even try with his magic. God, everyone around him was so stupid. The girl with the harp kept harping on at him about being too mean to his brother (the two siblings actually got along quite well most of the time, but lord, in an already stressful situation Marcassin could make everything so much more anxiety-inducing), the wizard boy kept crying about his dead mother, and the thief, God, he was insufferable. Not as insufferable as the fairy but damn close.

Marcassin was only young. Half of Oliver's age.

Gascon considered it for a second. No, he wasn't about to do what Swaine wanted him to do. That man could rot. He hated him. A pretentious holier-than-thou supposedly reformed criminal. Reformed. How stupid! He couldn't be reformed. The guy just teamed up with the Pure Hearted One or whatever the wizard boy's title was for his own gain. He didn't care. He couldn't care. He was too busy revelling in his kleptomania. A caring kleptomaniac, what a joke. That was close to being an oxymoron! At least Gascon wasn't being contradictory.

That's why he was surprised to see Swaine pass him a bottle of spring water once the man had sat down next to him again. The once thief didn't look at his young counterpart, in fact he looked straight ahead, past the shot-down pillar of rocks. When Gascon didn't take it immediately, he shook the bottle, gesturing for the boy to take his gift. "Drink it unless you want to keep sounding like a whining piglet." There was no venom. Was that a humorous note in his voice?

Gascon snatched it from him, like how he'd snatched those black truffles from the shopkeeper's counter for him and Marcassin. He paused. "Thank you."

He still didn't like Swaine, but he could at least pinpoint why. They were eerily similar. Of course Gascon didn't know just how similar the two of them were, but it unnerved him. The idea that somebody could relate to him on such an internal level was terrifying to him. He liked being alone. He liked keeping to himself. That's why Marcassin refusing to take his sage duties seriously frightened him. Gascon sure as Hell wasn't taking that burden.

He could at least encourage his brother before he left. Even if the words were completely empty. Not because Swaine told him to but because then he could leave Marcassin without another thought about him. No lasting guilt, no angst, no nothing. Just forget about his brother who had magic and who was complimented for his appearance constantly and who was just happy with his boring, dull, privileged life. Forget the good times. Forget making that model tank together. It wouldn't hurt him as badly. That's what Gascon told himself anyway. He didn't even want to confess silently to himself that Swaine was correct, both morally and logically. He also didn’t want to admit that he wanted to return to see his brother someday because that in and of itself was a difficult pill to swallow.

He drank the water gratefully but didn't thank the man twice. "Is that everything you wanted to talk to me about, are are you going to keep wasting your breath?"

Swaine forgot how good of a liar both of them were, perhaps due to tiredness, perhaps due to at least partial uncertainty about his old temperament, so he sighed and nodded. "Yep. I actually feel like going to sleep now." He stood up. "Don't check your pockets until morning."

Gascon patted himself down. He paused, then yelled. "My guilders!"

Swaine was already running into the house. "Advice isn't free, that's the last thing you need to know! G'night!"

————————

"Guys, please stop yelling, you're worse than Mr. Drippy..." Oliver begged, covering his ears with the palms of his hands.

"What's that supposed to mean, eh?" Drippy yelled. "And Ollie boy's right, you two need to calm down!"

"You're scaring Marcassin!" Esther was holding Gascon back while Oliver and Drippy were trying to hold Swaine still to stop him from doing a runner. They were all failing. Swaine was trying to make a break for it up the mountain while Gascon was trying to get his money back.

"Be a better person now and this may not have happened!" Swaine advised smugly, breaking from the weak grip of Oliver and Drippy (Drippy was more just holding onto his ankle but he really wanted to be a part of this) and booked it out of the house and further up the Tombstone Trail.

"What does that mean?!" Gascon demanded, trying to follow after him before seeing his older counterpart race back down, getting chased by Beasties. He burst out laughing to the point where he almost forgot to step aside and protect Marcassin from the monsters. He did, luckily, just before one of them could land a hit on his brother. Yeah, he really didn't want this kid to get hurt, emotionally or physically, that was what he decided.

"I just wanted to go to bed..." Oliver complained quietly as Swaine summoned a familiar to try and beat up the attackers.

"Well, we can't do that until these guys are dealt with," Esther complained. "Thanks a lot, Swaine."

"Watch out for that one, Swaine, he's got his eye on you."

"Very helpful, Gascon, thanks a ton!" Swaine scoffed.

On the bright side, Gascon got his own back on Swaine when he tripped the man while he was trying to run away from a particularly aggressive enemy. "Advice isn't free." He smiled smugly at his counterpart and Swaine was entirely torn between feeling proud and humiliated.

Okay, he was feeling a little proud.


End file.
